


About That Picnic

by burnttongueontea



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Asexual Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale and Crowley Have Their Picnic (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Drama queens, Fluff, Food-Lover Aziraphale (Good Omens), Fussy Angel, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Post-Apocalypse, a thought experiment mostly, naps, stupid fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-02-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22694209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnttongueontea/pseuds/burnttongueontea
Summary: Crowley, reckoning they've pretty much got the hang of this new 'freedom' thing, decides to surprise Aziraphale with a special home-cooked dinner in his flat. Unfortunately,he'sthe one who ends up getting the shock.‘You what?’‘I can’t eat that,’ repeats the angel.It’s as impossible to misinterpret as it was the first time.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 10
Kudos: 114
Collections: Aspec-friendly Good Omens





	About That Picnic

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing too polished, just noodling around with some slightly different ideas for writing Aziraphale. 
> 
> There's a line/detail that I COULD SWEAR I have borrowed from somewhere else. Only, I cannot for the life of me remember _where_ I think it's from. I've decided to take the risk and leave it in, but if you read the story Crowley tells in the park and think 'that's stolen and I know where from', please drop me a comment.

‘You _what_?’

‘I can’t eat that,’ repeats the angel.

It’s as impossible to misinterpret as it was the first time.

They’re standing next to the little dining table that doesn’t usually exist in Crowley’s flat at all. It really looks the part: spotless white tablecloth, candles, finest silverware, the whole works. The Ritz, _chez Crowley_. He’d thought it was a great idea. Especially the part where he’d convince Aziraphale they were doing something boring, like a board game, and then get to see the angel’s face when he opened the door onto _dinner_.

Aziraphale hasn’t even taken his coat off yet.

‘Of course you can,’ says Crowley. ‘They’re crêpes. You know. The sort of thing _you_ like to run about risking your silly neck for. Because you like them so much. Fond memories? You and me? Paris? The crêpes?’

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale, still anguished, ‘but they’re not _proper_ crêpes.’

Crowley opens his mouth. Closes his mouth. Opens it again.

‘I know that,’ he admits. ‘They’re sort of difficult to get right. It’s not like I cook things by hand all the time. Or… ever.’

Aziraphale isn’t paying him much attention. He’s leaning in to look more closely at the food, his expression sorrowful, like he’s just found the eviscerated mouse left on his pillow by a charitable pet cat. Delicately, he points out a bowl of fried mushrooms and onions.

‘Are those _burnt_?’

‘No! Maybe a tiny bit. Some of them. But they definitely taste good, I tried them.’

‘Oh, no,’ laments Aziraphale, shaking his head. ‘No, no, no. I can’t eat that.’

He looks up and around him, at the room.

‘And this…’ he says.

It took Crowley some time to prepare the flat. He was very selective about which plants were worthy of being placed on show. Same for his CD collection: hours of narrowing his choices down, but finally he’d set Chopin preludes to float at a dreamily soft volume from the sound system, and he’d been quite pleased with the decision. Not to mention the incense. He doesn’t really like his place to smell of anything, but he still wasted a whole morning going in and out of funny mystic-hippy shops before he found the one he thinks Aziraphale likes. It’s now burning away in a ceramic holder on the coffee table.

‘ _Yes_?’

‘Well, it’s your flat.’

‘Oh _right_ ,’ says Crowley, very loudly. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘We don’t eat here,’ says Aziraphale.

‘What do you _mean_ , we don’t eat here?’

‘We just never have. We eat out. It feels odd.’

Crowley gawps.

‘You’re not even going to taste it?’

‘We can still have our evening together.’ Aziraphale’s disturbed expression clears for the first time since he came in, and he holds up the canvas bag he’s been carrying. ‘I got a new puzzle. Well, not new, second-hand. Lucky find. Five _thousand_ pieces.’

He nods, eyes widened invitingly. Crowley could throttle him.[1]

‘But there’s all this food, Aziraphale! Do I have to just throw it away?’

‘Certainly not.’ Aziraphale takes the puzzle-box out and puts it on the table, where the plate should go. ‘There’s a gentleman sleeping rough just in front of the next building along. I’m sure he’d be very grateful for it.’

‘Oh, His Majesty is far too kind,’ says Crowley indignantly. ‘Really? I mean, really? I made you _dinner_ , _me_ , myself, not even cheating once, and you want me to take it all outside and give it to a homeless man?’

‘It’s not as if Hell will be watching.’

‘No. No, I suppose they won’t. But you know what?’ Crowley picks up the puzzle and thrusts it at Aziraphale, who takes it back in some surprise. ‘Let’s play it safe. _You’d_ better be the one to go out and give it to him. And then, to be really sure we don’t raise any suspicion, I think you should go straight back to the bookshop, and make sure you’re not seen in my company for a while.’

Not even Aziraphale can pretend to miss that message. His face goes wrong; not exactly hurt, just _wrong_. Flat. Which might be worse. Somewhere in the universe, Crowley feels, an invisible shutter has just slammed shut.

The angel clicks his fingers, and suddenly the crêpes and toppings on the table are sitting in neat little sealed boxes, instead of bowls and dishes. He starts rapidly loading the boxes into the canvas bag, and says:

‘You know, it isn’t _my_ fault you didn’t ask me before doing this. If you’d asked me, I’d have told you not to.’

‘Well, now I know. And I’ll definitely remember not to bother again, so don’t you worry about that.’

Crowley accompanies Aziraphale to the front door, and sees him off down the hallway.

‘You’ll have a nicer evening anyway, you and your five thousand pieces,’ he calls after the figure marching stiffly down the stairwell. ‘I hope there’s one missing.’

The trouble with trying to take time away from Aziraphale is that the angel turns up everywhere. If not in person, then by proxy.

It takes a week for him to turn up this time. Crowley spends a lot of time enviously watching Masterchef, a lot of time sleeping, and a lot of time thinking round and round the same circles.

When he gets bored of all that, he goes out to an auction room, because he’s learned that the estate of a notorious occultist is being sold off this month. There’s a specific pair of cursed spectacles, really useful to him but absolutely worthless to a human, that he’s been trying to trace since they got nicked from him in Amsterdam in 1637. The last he heard of them, via tenuous rumour, was in connection with this man’s name. Failing his reading glasses, he reasons, there’ll be _something_ worth having.

There is, but it isn’t in the late gentleman’s esoteric collection.

He finds himself pausing in front of a glass-fronted cabinet with nine or ten books on the shelf inside it. The cabinet is one lot, the books another. None of them are worth anything. But it’s a smaller name on one of the covers that makes him stop. Aziraphale is always harping on about that criminally underappreciated illustrator, so few printings of those books, he can never seem to complete his collection for love nor money...

‘Fuck me, it’s a missing book!’ he says out loud, for nobody’s benefit.

After the sound of his own voice, the auction room seems suddenly very quiet. A well-bred-looking lady standing just on the other side of the cabinet clears her throat, and walks away.

Sometimes, when you can’t find something, a good trick is to go back, way back to before you lost it. Start, in your head, at a moment when you knew for _certain_ where it was. Then retrace all your own steps, to find out how you got from the moment you had it, to the moment you didn’t.

Crowley has a _long_ and _persuasive_ conversation with the auctioneer, goes home, and picks up the receiver on his landline.

‘Crowley?’ comes the hesitant answer, after a short wait.

‘Aziraphale,’ he replies, low and serious. ‘Meet me at our spot on the Heath. We need to talk.’

Aziraphale looks nervous as he approaches the old, storm-downed tree trunk that used to be their landmark on Hampstead Heath.

‘Crowley,’ he says. ‘Has something happened?’

Crowley beckons him over without turning to face him. Once Aziraphale is close enough to hear a discreetly muted voice, he tells him:

‘I need to pass you an object of a sensitive diplomatic nature, and request some high-security intel.’

‘Oh?’

He holds out a brown paper bag. The angel takes it gingerly, as if being handed something incriminating.

‘You may look at what’s inside,’ says Crowley.

When he pulls out the book, Aziraphale is _radiantly_ pleased and relieved for a few moments. He’s relieved with every feature on his face. Then the glow subsides slightly, and he says:

‘I’m afraid I don’t quite deserve it.’

‘It’s alright, angel.’

‘I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘No-one meant to upset anyone. But we both did a pretty professional job of it anyway.’

Aziraphale is looking carefully at the book. He turns it over to read the back-cover copy, running his finger along beneath the words as he does so. Like he’s still learning how. Or, possibly, like he wants to take the gift in with as many of his senses as possible. He’ll wait until he’s alone, Crowley guesses, to fan the pages out and see what scents they’ve gathered along their journey.

‘So, you ready to give me intel?’

‘Yes,’ says Aziraphale apprehensively.

‘Let’s walk first.’

It’s a not-especially nice day, after a not-especially nice week. The Heath is soft and mulchy underfoot. But this cool, comfortable temperature is good for walking: it lets Aziraphale and Crowley get into a nice stride. The mind and the mouth tend to work more easily at a stride.

Crowley asks if Aziraphale finished his puzzle. He did. Unsurprisingly, there were no pieces missing – it takes a rebellious puzzle indeed to be missing a piece when Aziraphale is involved. Since then, it’s been business as usual, apparently. Had the shop open most days. There was a brief incident on Thursday when a customer’s pet ferret got loose and tried to hide under a bookcase, but that ended without tears. More or less. He had a good meal on Tuesday at a new Vietnamese place in Kensington, and a good meal on Friday, too, linguine with mussels and calamari at the usual Italian.

The path goes out on a narrow limb, taking them between two of the bathing ponds. There’s a brief conversational pause as Crowley stops and watches the play of colours on the water, sky-grey tessellating with foliage-green. When he starts walking again, he says:

‘Aziraphale…’

‘Yes?’

‘Before last week. When was the last time somebody cooked you a proper meal, _just_ for you, _without_ expecting to be paid for it?’

‘Oh. Well.’

They follow the path past the edge of the ponds. There’s a fork here; by unspoken agreement, they take a left. They start climbing a gentle incline up through some trees.

Aziraphale says: ‘I can’t say for certain.’

‘That long ago?’

‘Crowley, I’m an angel, not a spaniel. I don’t exactly spend my time hanging around human feet. Oh, now… there was that kind lady after the… but no, that doesn’t quite count by your rules, she was employed by the household.’ He looks thoughtful. ‘I’m sure it must have happened at _some_ point. Six thousand years is a long time, after all.’

‘Yes,’ Crowley agrees. ‘It is.’

‘Why? Do demons get many invitations to tea?’

‘Not at all. That’s why I remember them.’ His mind goes elsewhere for a moment, and then he comes back to the conversation with a grin. ‘There was this one man. Old man. Absolute cantankerous bastard. I was stuck living in a dive neighbourhood, pretending to be a legal clerk, and he was this down-on-his-luck shoemaker in the crumbling place next door. The fourteenth, this was. You remember the fourteenth.’

‘I do,’ groans Aziraphale.

‘Anyway, he hated me. I hated him. It all started out with him asking me about my bloody shoes one morning. Trying to sell his services to me, you know, except he has a stupid way of going about it, which is to ask _pointedly_ who has my custom at the minute because – to his _expert_ eye – they’re giving me a substandard service. Can you imagine? The utter cheek?’

‘Absolutely. I’ve never known your shoes to look anything less than splendid.’

‘Thank you. And I let him know it was utter cheek. So, we take offence at each other from the first. Then it’s only downhill from there. Everything I do invites complaint. I walk about the house too loudly. He saw me leave a candle unattended through the window. I’ve been making a mess, apparently, encouraging rats. So I start retaliating a bit. Little things. Accidentally dropping a pot of night soil outside his front door, whoopsie-daisy.’

‘Oh, _Crowley_.’

‘Yeah, well, I know. Big mistake. Escalation of hostilities. He thinks I’m putting off his customers deliberately, and the next thing you know he’s persuading all the other neighbours to complain about me too. I’m at my wits’ end with the bastard, because no matter how much I wind him up he won’t take it out on anyone else except me. I’m about to decide l have to move, no matter what Hell thinks. Then – get this – there’s a knock on my door one night and it’s him. Telling me he needs me to come over for supper.’

‘ _Needs_ you?’

‘Those words exactly. And I’m thinking – this isn’t right. Definitely fishy. Nobody’s got enough food at this point, yeah, you _remember_ the fourteenth century, and there’s just no _way_ this skinny old guy has scraped together dinner for two. He’s basically asking me to make him go hungry. Either his age is kicking in and he’s completely lost the plot, or this is a trick. You know, next line of attack. He’s got a nasty plan up his sleeve.’

‘So you said no.’

‘I tried. I did the old superiority thing on him, _why would a respectable man such as myself want your paltry scraps_ , et cetera et cetera. He’s not having it. _I don’t give a fig what you want_ , he says. _You have to make the food taste good_.’

Aziraphale looks astonished. He stops in his tracks and puts a hand on Crowley’s arm, to prevent him walking on ahead.

‘He _knew_ you were a demon?’

‘My thought too! I was panicking! Can’t possibly let him think he’s right, definitely can’t use a curse to make his stew more spicy, not very demonic, got to find a cover story… and then he explains. His only daughter got married six months ago. Wife died in childbirth – they’d lost four already – and for twenty years it was just him and the kid for supper, every night. Now he’s eating on his own. And apparently the food doesn’t taste good any more. Even though it’s the same food.’

They stand facing each other.

‘So?’ prompts Aziraphale.

‘So I ate with him. Did it every night till I left. He wouldn’t let me stop, _definitely_ wouldn’t give me less than an equal share. Just as rude to me the whole time. I found a way to tell Hell about it – said I’d been taking food from him, so he’d have to sell his things to avoid starving. Less to leave in his will, for his daughter and her family. Think they found it a bit twisted.’

He grins.

Aziraphale looks intently at Crowley for a few moments. Then he starts walking again. Crowley joins him. They walk quietly, side by side.

They’ve come around in a circle, without realising. They’re back at the bathing ponds. Crowley stops to watch the colours on the water again.

‘So anyway,’ he says eventually, as a goose comes drifting past them. ‘About that picnic…’

‘They’ve noticed us,’ says Aziraphale doubtfully.

‘They haven’t.’

‘That little boy keeps looking over.’

‘ _He’s_ not going to say anything. Anyway, don’t two respectable gentlemen have a right to sit on an available bench and observe their surroundings? That family made an informed decision to picnic in public. Where anyone can see it.’

Aziraphale narrows his eyes.

Thank Someone, Crowley had thought initially, that the English are still willing to go out for a picnic on damp ground on a cloudy day. But now he’s wishing they’d saved their field observation for sunnier weather. There’s something undeniably stoic about the faces of the family sitting around on their blanket.

‘I think,’ says Aziraphale, ‘that they _made_ the sandwiches, but bought the quiche.’

‘That seems likely.’

‘But there wouldn’t be any reason you couldn’t buy the sandwiches, too.’

‘Well. No. Actually, I don’t think there’s any reason you _have_ to have sandwiches at all. Unless you really want them.’

Over on the picnic blanket, the older son takes his hoodie off and drapes it over his grandmother’s shoulders. Then he sits back and starts rubbing desperately on his own bare arms for warmth.

Crowley’s about to force himself to say encouragingly that they’re definitely _bonding_ with each other, when all Hell breaks loose. Somebody’s Irish setter has noticed the unusual food-on-ground situation, and is racing towards opportunity. The family are sent scrambling, yelling and waving their hands, while the dog crashes its merry way through their lunch. Still twenty metres away, the dog’s owner is bellowing himself hoarse.

Aziraphale makes a melancholy noise. Sort of a sigh, but more _vocal._

‘It doesn’t look very pleasant.’

‘It doesn’t, does it? When you watch properly. Up close.’

‘I was thinking of Enid Blyton. There’s always a proper hamper, and a special little knife somebody carries in their pocket, and a nice pork pie. And all the separate parts of the picnic come wrapped in little…’ he raises a hand, does something unspecific with his fingers. Sighs again, wistfully. ‘Little chequered napkins. That’s what I was thinking of.’

‘I _knew_ you were thinking of the little chequered napkins. I could _tell._ It’s a dangerous way to go about things, angel. Assuming they’ll be like they are in Enid Blyton books.’

‘Do you suppose you have to sit on the ground the whole time? To do it properly, I mean?’

‘Yes,’ says Crowley. ‘I mean, generally, no. But for a first-time picnic, yes. I think you do.’

The angel looks woe-betide.

‘I haven’t voluntarily sat on the ground for four centuries,’ he says. ‘Let’s not bother.’

‘Nope,’ says Crowley firmly. ‘Let’s bother. It’s been fifty blinking years since you told me you’ve always wanted to go on a picnic. You can’t chicken out just like that.’

‘Not _always_. I was around before picnics.’

‘Barely!’

Aziraphale turns to him in confusion. Satisfied, Crowley lets him dangle for as long as he can before raising three fingers, and checking them off one by one:

‘Humans. Food. The great outdoors. You’ve got all the basic elements, there. Original Picnic.’

‘Well, I wasn’t invited to that one.’

‘And don’t you just wish you were?’ Then Crowley does something he doesn’t do very often, which is take Aziraphale’s hand and give it a squeeze. ‘Never too late to join the party.’

They put together a plan.

Crowley’s in charge of location and route. They’ll get far away from London, deep into the countryside, where there are no crowds of dog-walkers or shady onlookers. A pleasant pre-lunch walk might even be involved. They _will_ sit on the ground, but there’ll be cushions. Nice thick comfortable ones, with heft. They’ll bring proper plates and plenty of napkins, and windspeed must be monitored, so they don’t go on a day when the napkins might blow away.

Aziraphale, of course, is in charge of the food. That is, he’ll make a list of _exactly_ what to get and where to get it, and then they’ll share out the work of going to buy it all. The list will include a pork pie.

Somebody, if they get a spare moment, might try to source a nice hamper.

Crowley changes his browser homepage to the most consistently accurate weather forecast he can find, but it’s a decision that creates daily disappointment. The summer, despite everyone’s strongly-worded complaints, is not shaping up to a be a beautiful one.

And then one day there’s a hot weekend predicted. And it _stays_ predicted. On Tuesday, on Thursday, on Friday, the weather at the weekend is still predicted to be good.

He phones Aziraphale on Friday afternoon.

‘You’ve seen too, haven’t you? First scorcher of the year,’ says the angel happily.

‘Don’t say _first_ ,’ complains Crowley. ‘You’ll jinx it. Anyway. Is Operation Picnic a go?’

‘I have my Thermos at the ready.’

Crowley goes shopping.

‘How was that?’

The picnic is over. It was a two-hour affair, which is longer than Crowley was expecting, but not as long as he’d dared to hope for. Eventually Aziraphale started talking about the long drive home, and after two or three mentions it seemed imprudent to continue, so they cleared everything away and got back in the Bentley.

It’s baking hot, as promised. Aziraphale starts winding his window down, remembers halfway through he’s an angel, and leans back to watch the window finish opening itself.

‘Not how I imagined,’ he replies, ‘but nice.’

‘Better? Worse?’

‘ _Different_.’ He finds a flake of breadcrust on his trouser-leg, picks it up between forefinger and thumb, and drops it out of the window. ‘Real.’

‘Yeah,’ says Crowley. ‘Real’s always different. I liked the apple turnovers.’

‘A- _ha_ ,’ he purrs. ‘I said, didn’t I? That bakery is the only place to get them.’

Crowley starts the car, and pulls thoughtfully out from the layby into the road.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Not the _only_ place. _A_ place.’

It’s a crooked country lane, and they wend their way down it in perfect silence, pollen and birdsong wafting in through the open windows.

Crowley feels slightly dazed, as if he’s not quite up to the task of taking all these narrow corners. He wonders if it’s possible for celestial beings to get sunstroke. He’s never had it before, but for some reason, he can’t believe he’s ever _spent_ so long sitting in the open sunshine like that. Objectively, he must have done many times. He can’t remember. He doesn’t know how Aziraphale can stand it, a day like today, without dark glasses.

‘I’d like to try and cook for you again,’ he says out loud. ‘If you think that would be okay.’

‘In your flat?’

‘Anywhere you’re comfortable.’

‘Well, I don’t have much of a kitchen,’ Aziraphale says vaguely. ‘So I suppose it’ll have to be there.’

He didn’t sober up when Crowley did, for the journey home. Now he’s staring out at the yellow rapeseed fields with an atypical listlessness, head drifting to the side as if he’d like to lean it against the the inside of the door.

It’s _baking_ hot.

‘I could bring something over to your place,’ suggests Crowley. ‘You _must_ be used to eating at your place.’

‘Yes, yes. Snacks and things,’ Aziraphale replies, his voice still rather distant.

‘We’ll do that, then.’

Aziraphale closes his eyes.

‘I don’t know which table we’ll use.’

‘Could just eat off our laps. Sorry! Relax! Go back to your nap. We’ll use a table.’

‘Not napping,’ the angel says languidly, letting his eyes fall shut again. ‘Don’t nap.’

‘Of course.’

The lane widens and straightens just enough for some prick in a white Porsche to overtake Crowley impatiently. He watches the sports car go, shrinking away into the distance and then disappearing around a corner.

‘Imagine if we started doing it regularly,’ he says.

He’s not really expecting a reply, since Aziraphale appears to be asleep, but one comes immediately.

‘Doing what?’

‘Eating in. You and me. You know, as a normal thing.’ He smiles to himself. ‘Imagine us a century or so down the line. Eating chips together on the sofa, or whatever’s the next favourite food with this lot, and remembering how _weird_ that would have seemed to us once. And wondering what all the fuss was about.’

‘Pull over,’ says Aziraphale.

‘What?’

‘Can you pull over? I want – I want – I’d like – ’

Crowley doesn’t need him to get to the point. He pulls over. 

They put the empty hamper down in the footwell, the better to use the back seat. They should have done the nap lolling in the sunshine, really, when Crowley was still drunk, but somehow here is better anyway. Even though there’s not enough space. The tight confines make you feel shielded. The smell is right. Crowley rests his head against the window, and Aziraphale rests his head in Crowley’s lap. They’re quiet.

Crowley keeps making himself open his eyes at first. He has some sort of vague conviction that one of them should remain vigilant. After about ten minutes, a fly drifts in through the open window, and his dander goes up. He squirms beneath the angel.

‘We’re getting insects in here,’ he seethes.

‘Can’t you just persuade them to fly off?’

‘Oh yeah.’

It drifts its way out again.

Crowley closes his eyes properly then, yielding to their increasing weight. For an hour so they sleep, lulled by the to-and-fro thrumming of a nearby tractor, and the warmth of the car standing in the late afternoon sun.

[1] He couldn’t.


End file.
